Piloting Sepang with Michelin’s latest hi-performance tire

It’s one thing to drive the latest ultra-high-performance tire from one of the oldest and most respected tire companies in the world. It’s also another to experience said tire while it’s attached to some of the most desirable cars on earth like Porsche 911s, BMWs and Mercedes C- and E-classes. It’s yet another to drive said tire and said cars on one of the most illustrious race tracks in the world: Malaysia’s Sepang Formula One circuit.

Which is where I and several other Filipino motoring journalists found ourselves, together with some other Asian journalists, to sample two of Michelin’s latest high-performance tires: the Energy XM1 and the Pilot Sport.

Fellow STAR writer Brian Afuang gave a comprehensive look at the capabilities of the Energy XM1 last week so I’ll be delving into the otherwise more exciting Pilot Sport this time around.

The Pilot Sport takes on the throne as Michelin’s top-of-the-line ultra-high-performance tire. "More than ever before, Michelin has drawn from its technology and experiences in motorsports to produce the new Pilot Sport," said Alain Waha, General Manager of Michelin Asia (Singapore).

True enough, one look at the new Pilot Sport and you’ll see the dramatic evidence: four longitudinal grooves, three of which are almost identical to those found in the tires used in the highest form of motorsport, Formula One.

Unlike the previous Pilot tire which sported a unidirectional tread pattern, the new Pilot Sport now boasts of an asymmetric design. At first glance it may not seem as aggressive as the gator-back-like sweeping tread blocks of a unidirectional pattern, but extensive virtual and real-world testing by Michelin in just about every imaginable condition has shown that the new tire provides significant increases in every traction-related situation, be it acceleration, braking or cornering — in both wet- and dry-weather conditions.

Equally important are the advancements made by this tire in the realms of riding comfort and tread noise. To prove their point, Michelin provided identical pairs of BMW 3-series sedans, one shod with Michelin Pilot Sports and the other equipped with Bridgestone’s S03 ultra-high-performance tires, one of the Pilot Sport’s chief competitors.

While we had no instruments to quantify the two tires’ differences in comfort and noise, initial seat-of-the-pants feel pointed to a noticeable reduction in tire roar at cruising speed with the Pilot Sport. As for riding comfort, well, it would’ve been more telling on Manila’s potholed streets rather than Sepang’s F1-quality billiard table-smooth tarmac.

We drove specific portions of the track only as different activities were being done at various other portions (we heard a few MotoGP bikes screaming along the back straight) during the day. While this gave us no chance to set personal records for a full lap of Sepang, this also enabled us to enjoy acceleration, braking, cornering and slalom exercises in different Pilot Sport-shod BMWs and Mercedes.

However, perhaps the highlight of our Sepang experience was being driven by race drivers using Pilot Sport-shod high-performance 5.5-liter V8-powered AMG E55 or a Porsche 911 GT3 or, taking the cake, a 911 GT3 Carrera Cup race car, the latter wearing Michelin racing slicks for truly gut-wrenching cornering at high speed. It was hard not to be impressed.

The Pilot Sport has already been specifically homologated by original equipment manufacturers and tuners of extreme-performance cars like the Porsche 911 GT3, the Audi TT Quattro, the BMW M3 with Sequential Manual Gearbox, BMW M3 AC Schnitzer and the new Chrysler Crossfire coupe that has already broken the 1.0-g barrier in skidpad cornering. Pound for pound and peso for peso, installing a set of Pilot Sports on your car should easily yield one of the most dramatic performance enhancements a sporting driver could ever hope for.